09 July, 2015

Lakeside living in Essel Towers Gurgaon

Like many other apartment blocks in Gurgaon, we woke up to find that there has been around 20mm (or some such number which is not alarming at all) of rain overnight.

Essel Tower Central Pier

Essel Tower Central Canal


The sad thing is that this happens every year in Gurgaon and in many other cities of India. It is even worse that a lot of this happens in the newer parts of town - the so-called 'planned extensions' of a city, which are always parts of a masterplan.





Gurgaon Manesar 2031 plan

Take a look at this plan - there are no rivers or canals here. There is no thought given to natural drainage. The idea probably s to budget for manmade drainage and not build it and pocket the money. Or, there is no idea.  I work for myself. A lot of my capabilities are channeled towards creating maximum possible money for myself - whether I do a good job or not is debatable. I think that government officials (Especially the Urban development variety) are experts at this skill.

Gurgaon is new - there are parts of Gurgaon which were farms less than 5 years ago. New or old does not matter really when it comes to incompetence of town planners or the indifference of town dwellers. No matter which part of such cities does one live in, we all go through this every year in the monsoons and do not really do anything about it.

For a country and a media which does not tire of aggrandizing itself ("India's PM has a 56" chest, Indian origin kid wins spelling bee, Granada now supports India's bid for UNSC permanence and so on), we should all hang our heads in shame.





1 comment:

Pooja said...

I was thinking about just this apathy. I thought i hate rains, but realized i hate the infrastructure. But doing something about it seems to tedious and ineffectual..

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